McGowan’s practice encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture and installation; working in a repetitive process she forms layers of physical interactions; in the wrapping of thread or by continually dipping fabric in dye. The materials themselves echo a timely quality as she employs seasonal foliage and vegetables gathered from daily trips as a dipping medium.
Completely enthralled and agitated by the cycles of life, Stephanie McGowan’s solo show at Artlink focuses on utilising a materials memory to hold on to and record the passing of time. McGowan’s threaded paintings begin as pixelated imagery, abstractions of personal/collective memories that become unfamiliar coded, colour mappings filled with emotion. McGowan hopes that her objects charged with memory and creative actions will act as connections between herself and the viewer.
How are the fabrics dyed?
The fabric is linen, I submerge them, often multiple times, in large buckets and paddling pools filled with water and natural dyes. Allowing the material to dry or not, between dipping greatly affects my results, as does what I choose to drape them on or what i set on them as they dry.
I use various natural dying substances from vegetables to wild foliage. Some examples that I used for Afterlight works include; seaweeds, spinach, red cabbage, turmeric, yellow onion, red onion, sea rocks and their minerals, beetroot, elderberry, blueberries, wild berries, weeds. The interactions between the different layers and dyes can produce nice surprises and personality to the work. As the pieces near an end I have also chosen to only paint on a particular section. Over time I have developed little tricks to have some control in the effects of the dying but the process mostly has a mind of its own.
Where do the images come from?
My images are taken from my personal photos and also from collective imagery. The work for Afterlight has focused on personal photos from the time I had my daughter.
Why do you use a grid/pixilation?
I use pixilation as a way of distorting the memory in the image. As time passes we remember something or someone from a particular perspective or moment, not quite as it was in the moment. While spending time with these memories and transferring them through a grid with embroidery the work develops the fond moment in a new way. My actions and the colours I use are what I hope embody the memory.
While in this process I’m intuitively am quite selective with which sections I include or don’t, as am I while choosing to brighten/ darken areas in comparison to my starting image. I play games with myself while making the work for example allowing myself just a few oddly patched squares or alternating in directions, with the rare diagonally embroidered or by having varying sizes.
Why do you show the reverse side of the work?
I show the back of the work because it makes the way I worked easier to trace for the viewer, I trying to decode this when I look at artists work. I think there’s a beauty in their imperfection too.
Where did the idea for the huge drawing come from?
The mark making is much like the thread work actions I make, it’s also reminds me of marking time off while waiting or counting something. I began with smaller ones and just thought a larger wallpaper like version would be interesting as a backing to some of the work. All the work is concerned with the passing of time and life chapters, the materials and how I make continuously consider time, mark making, embroidering, repeatedly dipping fabric, wrapping, tying. Whether considering reconnections to the past or now as I transitioned in my path to a mother and watch my daughter begin her journey in life.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Stephanie McGowan is a visual Artist based in the Northwest of Ireland. She gained distinction in her BA of Fine Art from Institute of Technology Sligo, following this she was selected for the RDS Visual Arts Awards 2017. She continued hers studies and completed a Masters in Contemporary Art Practice at The University of Edinburgh in 2018.
McGowan has exhibited both nationally and internationally including; 126 Gallery Galway, 13th International Textile Art Biennial Ukraine, Courthouse Gallery and studios Clare, Embassy Edinburgh, Harbinger Reykjavik, ICA Singapore, Leitrim Sculpture Centre, Mazda 2.5 Leipzig Germany, Network of Arts Lucerne, The Hyde Bridge Gallery Sligo, The old biscuit Factory London, Whitespace Edinburgh. She is a member of N I N E collective. In 2021 McGowan was awarded an Arts Council Agility grant.
Dechado
by Piedad Bonnett
Mira: todo un dechado de virtudes —diría mi madre—.
Al pasado, punto de cruz, lazadas, pespuntes de oro, repujados en plata, flores con alma, sedas.
Una bella labor.
Dedicación, esmero, disciplina.
Pero el reverso:
nudos que se deshacen, remates descuidados, enredos, manchas
de sangre que han dejado los pinchazos.
Lo crudo, lo incompleto, lo que nunca podemos o sabemos terminar.
Hilos en punta y frustración y pena.
A paragon of virtue
by Piedad Bonnett
Look: a paragon of virtues -my mother would say-.
Cross stitch, embroidery, lacing, gold stitching, silver embossing, flowers with a soul, silks.
Beautiful work.
Dedication, care, discipline.
But the reverse side:
unravelling knots, careless finishing touches, tangles, bloodstains left by the pinpricks.
The raw, the incomplete, what we never can or know how to finish.
Spiky threads and frustration and sorrow.
